12/03/2025
I have done all of the mental health side of things when it comes to managing chronic pain and chronic illness, and I love a lot of those practices. But I don't love how it's touted as a cure for chronic pain, and it's really concerning at how much traction this is gaining in the mainstream media.
It took me a decade to ask for any help of any kind. One, because I didn't have health insurance for many of those years. And two, because when I did try to go to Western Medicine, I was told my labs were normal and therefore I was fine and sent me on my way. So that story is very real and it's a reason why so many people are flocking to holistic practices that promise a cure.
But I promise you that the somatic work that tells you your chronic pain is gonna be cured through their program is just as harmful—if not more harmful—than the doctor who said your labs are normal, and therefore you should go home and stop worrying about it and just be happy.
Here's what I will say: There is something to be said about helping to calm down an overactive nervous system for a lot of us, especially if you have ADHD or if you grew up in a household with a lot of conflict or silent, resentful kind of conflict. Your nervous system probably has a learned behavior to respond really quickly, to get angry really quickly, or to go silent really quickly. This is a protective response.
And learning how to use somatic practices—in other words, all that means, all somatic means is "of the body"—is learning how to pay attention to the heartbeat that starts racing really fast. And let's say you usually ignore that. You don't consciously do this, but it's just the automatic behavior because that's what kept you safe as a kid. So you're ignoring that heartbeat racing really fast, and then you go about your day, and before you know it, you've gotten into a car accident or you've yelled at somebody you love for no good reason.
There may not have been a good reason for you to yell at that person, but there is a good reason why your nervous system is on high alert. And so a lot of somatic practices are helping you to bring awareness to the high alert so that you can then decide what to do with that high alert. And that's—I will give some grace here to the somatic programs that preach this. I just won't give grace to anyone who is claiming a cure for their condition.
Our high alerts are often protective, but because we are creatures of habit and we like to do things very autonomously, meaning kind of without thinking—you know, we like to take the same drive to work every day so that we know the route, or we like to sleep in our same bed every night so that we know what to expect and feel throughout the night. Humans like familiarity. That is a human trait.
So our brains will take the fastest route it knows when a particular sensation pops up. Like let's say I have a small little kind of ping in my back. If I have chronic low back pain, that ping, instead of it just being a small little tiny sensation, my body and brain will bring up all of these past memories and say, remember how many times the ping turned into a full blown back locked up, can't walk? Yeah. So this ping is danger and we need to sit down or we need to do something for it. And then we might react really quickly.
And so the practice here is not some somatic practice that's going to cure your chronic pain. The practice is learning how to slow down, get in touch with what's happening, and not let your automatic responses go on overdrive. And all this is, is the power of pause. Like this is an ancient practice that has been taught in every single type of therapy as well, except for maybe psychoanalysis. But the power of pause is huge.
So if I learn how to be less reactive, I feel that ping, and instead of just jumping up or shutting down or collapsing, I instead take a deep breath and I say, what's happening here? And I pay attention to what my body's feeling, and I might notice, oh, that was just like a passing sensation. Or I might notice, okay, that sensation is alerting me to this tightness that's happening over here. Maybe I need to do some PT exercises or stretch or something like that.
The problem is, with just listening to your body, sometimes you need another professional or another area of expertise to come in and give you some help. In the back example, sometimes tightness does not mean you should stretch. Sometimes that stretching will actually make it worse. But who can help you figure that out if you are not knowledgeable about the body—and you can't be knowledgeable about every single topic in the body either? A physical therapist who understands chronic pain.
So, long-winded spiel about all of the somatic programs that you see around curing conditions: All these programs do is help you learn how to relax a little bit, learn to pause, and be a little bit calmer. And sometimes they help you reframe some thoughts that you have that are not quite working out in your favor, and they're not based in reality. They're based in fear.
But nobody can tell you what thoughts are based in reality versus fear only. You can figure that out, and sometimes it does take some time to figure that out.
So I just wanted to put that out there. Let me know your thoughts.
